EL PASO, Texas -- Aarin Walston brought her cat, Attila, to the veterinarian to get an abscess on its neck treated. While it got some attention, the cat scratched a technician's finger, and that requires a call to animal control.

"I was basically told that he would be, if it did happen again, if he bit or scratched somebody again, he'd be taken away from me and I'd face charges for something that happened in a vet's office that I had absolutely no control over whatsoever," said Walston, of northeast El Paso.

Veterinarian offices must report any bites or scratches to authorities, but even though the ordinance doesn't call for the owner to get a ticket if the animal has received its proper vaccinations, the officer issued one anyway.

"When she wrote the ticket, I was thinking to myself, this is a joke, you know. Someone's going to jump out and say, 'Surprise. A-ha, I got you,'" said Walston.

"As I talked with the officer, she basically recognized that she had made a mistake, but her thought on the process was, initially, if there's a bite incident, there must be a violation of law," said Ray Sim, with the El Paso City-County office of Animal Regulation and Disease Control.

Sim became director of El Paso's animal control office just three weeks ago. While he admits the officer over-reached, one of his top priorities is getting more pet owners to comply with regulations.

"Just the law of making sure that your pets are identified is not complied with, and we'll be enforcing that law rather strictly," said Sim. For some, like Walston, that boils down to better notification.

"I'd like to get the ordinance changed to where it's defined things a lot better or make an ordinance to where every vet's office in the city has to have a sign saying exactly, you know, this is the procedure that's going to happen," said Walston.

Walston's citation has since been dismissed and the officer who wrote the ticket apologized to her in person Monday afternoon.